Motive
by SuperWG
Summary: The crime was horrifying. But what was even more unbelievable was the reason for it. This is my first one, hoping to make a good impression.


I don't own anything.

Robin panicked as he got the emergency signal on his communicator. He was hoping that he and Starfire could have a nice day out with no interruptions. It seemed that wasn't the case.

When he answered the call, Cyborg appeared on screen. "Cyborg, what's the trouble?" Robin asked, already preparing to take care of the threat. He noticed some broken glass and damaged fixtures in the background. Someone had likely broken into the tower while he was out!

"Robin, get here quick!"

When he arrived, the tower had been trashed. And worse, one of his teammates had been killed, and Cyborg was injured. He was knocked out with an X-shaped projectile stuck to his side. He had been short circuited. Red X stood a few feet from the others, clearly in a battle stance.

"Red X! How could you do this?" Robin lost it then. He rushed in to attack the villain with everything he had.

 _ **Earlier that day**_

It was a typical day at Titans Tower. At least as far as Beast Boy (sometimes known as Gar) could tell. He'd just finished washing his face and brushing his teeth in the bathroom, and was headed to the common room and kitchen for some breakfast.

"Morning, BB" Cyborg greeted. He was munching on some cereal since his meat was gone for the time being.

"What up, Cy?" Beast Boy said. He was one of those people who always seemed so happy and jovial. "What do you say I finally top that high score of yours in _Mega Monkeys 5_ after breakfast?"

"Sure, if you think you can!" Cyborg usually beat Beast Boy at the video games they played, but sometimes Beast Boy won. As he wandered further into the common room, he noticed Raven sitting on the couch reading one of her books. "Good morning Raven" he said.

"Good morning Beast Boy" she replied without looking up from her book. He then greeted Robin and Starfire who were both sitting at the computer. Robin was showing her some of the wonders of earthly technology.

"Good morning, Freind Beast Boy! Isn't it such a glorious day?" she said with even more enthusiasm than Beast Boy always had.

"Sure is. I might even go out a bit today." Robin looked up at Beast Boy from where he was seated.

"Morning Beast Boy. Funny you should mention going out, me and Star are heading out on the town for a few hours today. Think you guys can hold it down while we're gone?"

Beast Boy agreed. He guessed the two were kind of dating now. They had been spending a lot of time together. He walked over to the fridge to decide what to eat.

He wasn't happy with what he had in the fridge. His tofu was all gone, and the only things he could eat were salad and cereal with soymilk, neither of which he particularly felt like this morning. He wanted something hot. He wanted some tofu eggs. "Any chance you can stop by the store while you're out? I need a few things."

"Sorry Beast Boy, no one can go to the grocery store until next week." He slumped and grabbed some cereal, deciding to save the salad for dinner.

After breakfast he tried to join Raven on the couch. He leaned over to her. "What's up Rae?"

She scoffed. "Raven. Get it right!"

"Hehe, sorry. Raven. Anyway, whatcha readin?"

"A book."

"What kind of book?"

"Isn't it obvious that I don't want to be bothered right now?"

Sometimes when he was bored, he'd keep going with this. But today he was looking forward to beating Cyborg in _Mega Monkeys 5_ , so he decided to just drop it. It wasn't fun being ignored by her, but he was usually a good sport about it. Soon enough Cyborg came over there and they got the game booted up.

"Aw yea! You're going down BB!" Cyborg said excitedly as the two began their game session. Raven chose this moment to go to her room to finish reading and meditate. She would have gone right after Beast Boy started bothering her, but every once in a while the green teen would get his feelings hurt. She thought she might take it easy on him today.

Sometime during the session, Robin and Starfire said their goodbyes and headed out to the city. By the end of said session Gar had managed to surpass Cyborg's high score and hold the current record. Once a couple of hours passed, Cyborg announced that he was going downstairs to make some changes to the T-Car. "Aw, do you have to?" said Beast Boy.

"Yes I do. Besides, you'll be glad when we get to take it out for a spin." Gar figured that was a good reason. He went up to the roof and went flying for about twenty minutes or so. Sometimes it was nice to soar with the birds. Other days he might race some cheetas or run with some of the other ground animals, and on occasion even morph into a fish and swim with them. Just because there weren't criminals attacking Jump City at the moment didn't mean he couldn't enjoy his powers.

He came inside and took a quick five minute shower. Normally it would be a little longer but the water had gotten cold after a short time. While he was in there, he wondered if he closed the roof door. He was a carefree person, but sometimes being carefree wasn't a good thing. He decided that it would be okay. There weren't too many villains that could fly, and no one had the motive to break into the tower and attack them. Most villains just rob banks and stuff.

What he didn't know was that Red X had been planning to break into the tower that day. He had prepared to override the security system, but he didn't need to, because the roof door was open. And it wasn't hard for X to get to the roof. He'd been hoping to take back the belt that Robin took from him during the fight with Professor Chang. His replacement for it didn't work nearly as well as the original did. He planned on having no witnesses, and wasn't sure what he'd do if someone saw him. He didn't want to kill anyone, but things would get very complicated if he was spotted, as Robin wouldn't rest until he found and captured him. 'I'll just have to try _very_ hard not to get caught' he thought.

When Beast Boy got back to the common room, it was still empty. He was craving something hot. His eye landed on a single packet of Herbal tea. He normally wouldn't drink this nasty stuff, but he really needed something hot today. He put on some water to boil. He figured Raven wouldn't mind. He usually saw her drink this without putting anything in it. He tried it like that, and boy was it bitter. He put some sugar and milk in it immediately, then enjoyed the hot, steamy beverage. 'Wait, was that the last one?' he thought. Again, carefree isn't always the way to go.

He stretched his legs out on the couch and got ready to just sit and relax. "I didn't realize you needed the whole couch."

Startled, he whipped his head up to find Raven floating into the common room. He scratched the back of his neck and laughed sheepishly.

"What happened to that oh-so-special gaming session you and Cyborg were having?"

"He had to go work on the T-Car after a few hours. And he was tired of losing to me. I beat his high score!"

"Wow, that's almost as impressive as him actually putting up with you for two whole hours" she deadpanned. Beast Boy laughed. Sometimes you had to have fun laughing at yourself. Especially if you lived with Raven.

She started for the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea when she noticed a teacup in the sink, oddly enough with the tea bag still in it. "Beast Boy..."

Her voice had dropped the usual monotone and lighthearted demeanor it had a second ago. Now it had more of a warning tone to it.

"Yea Rae?"

"Did you drink my tea?"

"Hehe, well... yea. I really needed something hot."

"You idiot! That was the last one!"

"How did you even know I drank it?"

"No one else would be dumb enough to leave the teabag in the cup and put them both in the sink!"

"Oh yea. Sorry."

"Sorry? That's all you can say?" Raven was frustrated. She hadn't gotten a chance to make any tea that morning and had been looking forward to it all day. She even cut her meditation short for it. She figured rage, the emotion she had neglected to surpress, wouldn't be a problem today.

"Why don't you just go to the store and get some more?"

"Because Robin won't let us go there until next week!"

"Oh yea, that."

"How could someone as stupid as you even be on this team?"

Beast Boy was getting annoyed. She didn't have to make this big of a stink over some tea. "What is the big deal? I drink one cup of tea and you're berating me like this? I don't know why I even try to get along with you!"

She could feel her rage taking over. 'No, not over something this stupid' she thought, but she couldn't seem to help it. Her eyes glowed red. "You try to get along with me so I don't kill you."

Gar felt panic rush into him. She had used her powers to summon a knife from the drawer. Her demonic eyes flashed with demented glee. "Whoa, what are you doing? You're not really that mad about some tea, are you?"

Her anger pushed its way to the surface as she took a step towards the green changeling. He started to turn and run when black energy encased him. He couldn't move. "Somebody help!" he screamed, hoping that this was just some sort of bad dream. Was this really happening?

Cyborg burst into the common room and saw the scene. "Rae, what are you doing? I know Grass Stain can be annoying, but I can't let you hurt him."

"Oh, so you're on his side?"

Cyborg pulled out his communicator. They needed Robin, now. Luckily, he answered right away. "Cyborg, what's the trouble?"

"Robin, get here quick!"

Raven used her powers to throw him to the side. She blasted the area around him so that high objects would fall and pin him to the ground, which they did. Beast Boy's eyes widened. He knew he annoyed Raven a lot, but never in a million years did he think she would actually hurt him, or any of their other teammates. He struggled to break free from the dark energy that was binding him, but to no avail.

His heartbeat sped up when he felt her hand grip his shoulder. Less than a second later, he felt a sharp pain penetrate his back. He looked down to see a bloody knife protruding from his stomach. He fell to the ground and lie motionless.

"Beast Boy!" Cyborg's anguished cry rang out through the tower. He looked at Raven, still reeling at this display of brutality. He still couldn't move, but he aimed his sonic cannon at her. She turned her head towards him before he could fire it though.

"Your turn!" she hissed as she telekenetically rocketed another knife towards the robotic teen. A red X-shaped projectile intercepted the knife. Cyborg was shocked to see Red X in the tower, and even more shocked that he had saved him.

"I may be a theif, but I'm no killer. And I also don't like to see others killed, not even goody two shoes heroes." Raven shot a bolt of black energy at the theif, who nimbly dodged it. He ran and picked up some of the debris that had fallen onto Cyborg, freeing him. The cybernetic teen charged Raven.

The rage Raven was a little bit smarter and more resourceful than her normal self. She knew which of X's gadgets would disable Cyborg. She used her black energy to pick up one of those from X's belt and threw it at Cyborg. The teen was struck on his side, shocked, and rendered unconcious.

As Raven tried to encase X's belt with black energy and take it from him, she accidently triggered something. One of the X's exploded in a flash of white. Red X was thrown back, but quickly scrambled to his feet in a fighting position.

It was only then that Raven was able to take full control of her body and powers, but it was too late. She looked over at Beast Boy who lie limp on the floor, a horrifying pool of blood under him. "What have I done?"

She rushed to her room, needing to meditate before she hurt any more of her friends.

Red X didn't know what to do. He had never seen anything like this before. At least, not with heroes. He was about to just run away when Robin and Starfire burst into the room. "Red X! How could you do this?" ...

It took Red X a while to finally get Robin to believe him about what really happened. He tried not to fight Robin, tried to run away. But The masked hero chased him relentlessly, eventually tackling and pummeling him. Lucky for him, Starfire was tending to the injured Cyborg and trying to find Raven to find out what happened, so only Robin gave chase to the theif. At some point, Cyborg regained conciousness and contacted Robin, telling him the truth. At first he thought Cyborg had his programming tampered with, so as to force him to corroborate Red X's story. But back at the tower, Raven ruefully admitted that it was she who ended the young changeling's life.

Robin couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that it was his team and his friends that the newspaper headline that he was reading was describing. **"Stabbing Death Over A Cup of Tea"** He could see some of the comments about the incident when he read about it online.

"Man, that must've been some really good tea."

"Just horrible. And these were supposed to be our heroes."

"Make sure you don't take her parking spot. The whole city will be blown up! Lol!"

Why would they be making jokes about something so serious? Robin had a good mind to attack them in the comments, but he refrained.

Raven turned herself in shortly after the incident occured. She was sent to Jump City's jail and placed on suicide watch. She had actually harbored a crush on the green Titan, which could have explained why she was so hurt by what he did that day. It was also why she felt even worse about what she had done. The team was divided over their reactions to the incident. Robin was furious with Raven and decided she was dead to him. Starfire felt that Robin was being too hard on her. She insisted that Raven wasn't in control when the incident occured and that they should forgive her. The two had many arguments about that, eventually leading Robin to just leave and never come back. Cyborg didn't even know how to react. He just wished he could erase the entire thing from his memory, and replace it with a false one of his little green friend happily setting off to rejoin the Doom Patrol or something. He eventually looked into joining the Justice League to continue the fight for justice.

The horrifying events that took place in front of him pushed Red X to give up theivery. He actually met up with Robin and the two became somewhat of a crime fighting duo. No one actually knows where Starfire went. She didn't return to Tameran, but resided in an unknown location son earth.

 _ **Six months later...**_

Raven sat calmly in her cell as she prepared to do what she had been planning for a while. She had finally managed to find all the things she needed within the facility. She memorized the necromancing spell, and the one to make a person actually alive again, as opposed to a zombie-like creature. All she had to do was escape and get to Garfield's grave.

"I love you Beast Boy, and I will bring you back."


End file.
